Regular contributor Simeon King found this Live question in the UTS (University of Technology, Sydney, Building 6, Design Architecture Building building, level 3, Ultimo) lift lobby with attached pen, seeking responses. So far respondents have fallen back on being irreverent :
propaganda, Jesus, choosing fonts, patronizing …

An update from Simeon some six hours later :

• Advertising
• Designing
• Changing the world
• Using least ink for most info
• Pretty posters
• The environment
• Me
• Everything
• Better signs than this
• Picture Perfect Printing (advert) 04!!0580409
• Making cool shit!
• Influence
• Dressing really well
• The GFC
• Informing the public
• Making something worth keeping
• Subliminal messages
• Cutting down trees
• Cool things
• Wasting ink
• Useless stuff
• Poo
• Making finger paintings
• Designing todays brandscape
• Having fun

Do any of our readers out there, have any off the cuff thoughts regarding “what is a graphic designer responsible for”

We’ll start by saying — that often a designer will make seemingly small decisions about a project that can have significant impact down the line of those that have to implement and use our work. One example was when we were asked to develop some imagery for a large Australian bank. The bank’s image guides had a complex set of rules in and around generating imagery, which at the time made the process of making images quite expensive, as professional photography was mostly required to meet these standards. One can image that these rules applied across the whole organisation made for a very costly process to produce unique images.

In summary a designer is responsible for exploring and understanding the impacts of their decisions before they make recommendations to their client.